Christopher Buecheler

rosalarian: Angelina Jolie had a double mastectomy, in case you...

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:45:23 -0400

Angelina Jolie had a double mastectomy, in case you hadn’t heard. How dare she remove those ticking time bombs from her chest, amiright? Like, hasn’t she learned by now that her body is public domain and we all get to vote on what she does with it? Sheesh, how selfish can ya get.

Awesome.

katiewoodger: DISNEY HAVE STOLEN MY ARTWORK I don’t know what...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:52:51 -0400

katiewoodger:

DISNEY HAVE STOLEN MY ARTWORK

I don’t know what to do. I am so upset. Can anyone help me?

My painting was created back in 2010, (see it HERE) and since then so many people have expressed their love for it, not just on tumblr, but in many places. At least 9 people had it tattooed on their bodies. It’s one of my favourite images I created at University and I was proud of it in many ways.

Disney have used it on a cosmetics bag HERE (look at the back)
and they have produced a Tshirt HERE with a really similar design clearly modeled from my painting

I’m so mad because I have no chance at getting Disney to do anything about it. I had so much respect for the company and now I am just SO upset and disappointed.

Any help, advice or signal boosting would be amazing. And thank you so much to the kind person who messaged me about this.

Another example of a big company stealing artwork. The design on the bag is *identical* and obvious theft. The other design is clearly inspired but at least not a direct rip.

The Christopher Buecheler Plan For Healthy Fun Happy Times

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 09:30:14 -0400

Or: How I lost 30 lbs, got in shape, and still get to drink beer when I want.

This is a long and personal post, coming on a one year anniversary of something (see below) … but it’s important to me, so please forgive the wordiness.

The Beginning

I’ve struggled with my weight since adolescence, and I weighed around 240 lbs and had a size 40 waist when I graduated from high school. After that, I periodically went on diets and hit the gym, but it was the same old story — lose ten pounds, get tired of the routine, slack off, put fifteen pounds on. By 2001, I was living in California and weighed 296 lbs with a size 46 waist. I could no longer shop anywhere except Big & Tall stores. I was 24 years old. I looked like this:

Let me be clear, here: this had a crippling effect on my life long before any health issues reared their heads. I didn’t like going out in public. I couldn’t look members of the opposite sex in the eye unless I’d known them for months. Between the ages of nineteen and twenty-seven, I did not go on what could properly be called a date with a woman a single time. That’s eight years of self-enforced but also highly undesired celibacy. When I wasn’t working, I was at home with my computers. Mostly I was working.

I’d like to say that I took control of things at that point, and to some extent I did. I started walking, lifting weights, and eating better, and I got myself down to 250. Losing 46 lbs is no joke, and I’m proud I did it, but it still left me with about 75 lbs to go to reach what I now think is an ideal weight for my frame. Also, around that point, I started to slip. I started to skip walking, skip lifting weights … started having that extra brownie along with my salad.

I was still around 250, but probably headed back toward 296 when I got sick. I mean brutally, violently sick. The most awful night of my entire life so far. I remember at one point, around 6 AM, staring into the mirror with bloodshot eyes after another round of dry heaving and shouting, “There’s nothing left! There’s nothing left in my entire fucking body!” … I felt like I’d puked up not only every last bit of food, but every last bit of bile, blood, and bone marrow within me.

Whatever it was that made me sick, it screwed up my body good. In the ensuing weeks, every time I ate, I began to feel ill. Sometimes I would eat something simple — we’re talking two pieces of bread with some sliced turkey breast on them — and still wrestle with nausea for hours. I was diagnosed with H. Pylori, the bacteria which causes peptic ulcers. I went on a course of massive antibiotics and cleared that up … but I was still getting sick every time I ate.

I began having panic attacks when I thought about eating. I tried everything. I went gluten-free. I went vegetarian for four months. I had more doctor’s visits and blood tests than I could count. Nothing helped. Slowly but surely I just … stopped eating. I was down to a single meal per day, and that meal was typically something like half a cup of trail mix and a packet of cheese and crackers. I was subsisting on around 300-400 calories a day, tops. Some days I ate nothing. Once I went four full days with only chicken broth. Feeling hungry had come to be less scary and awful than feeling full.

This wasn’t like a five or ten-day fast; this went on for months and months. When you are starving, literally starving, you obsess over food. You watch people eat, you watch people cook, and you buy food for other people like a crazy person. I bought pizza and cookies and candy for my office. I sent my family gift packs of food. I watched NOTHING but the Food Network for months. I watched people eat the way horny guys watch people fuck.

I dropped down to 136 pounds. That’s 160 lbs below my max — an entire adult male human being. Gone. My clothes, which I hadn’t changed, fluttered around me like sails. I grew weaker and weaker, less able to do even basic day-to-day tasks like getting up and going to the office. I had to rest often, because simple tasks like carrying a box from my car to my apartment exhausted me. I spent a lot of time shaking.

I finally gave up in August 2003, left California, and moved home to be with my family for support. When I got off the plane my mother took one look at me, gasped, and started crying.

I literally thought I was dying. I think everyone did, even the doctors. In addition to how sick I felt, my bloodwork was all messed up; I had to have a bone marrow biopsy — a painful procedure where they drill into your hip bone and collect samples — because they thought I had leukemia. Turned out I didn’t, which was great, except it still meant no one quite knew what was wrong with me.

I ended up going on anti-anxiety meds, and they helped. I still felt lousy when I ate, but at least I wasn’t panicking about it. Slowly I began to put weight back on, and as I did, my bloodwork evened out.

We never did figure out what was wrong with me … I still feel shitty most of the time when I eat, and it’s been ten years. I feel sick right now, typing this, from the dinner I ate more than three hours ago. I am still at my least-anxious when I’m hungry, and I detest feeling stuffed. This is just “the way it is” from now on. That’s fine. I know how to deal with it now. I don’t even take the meds anymore, because I can manage the panic on my own.

None of that, however, kept me from eating, and eating, once I stopped having those panic attacks.

Recovery

Eventually I took a job in Philly and moved there. When they took my employee picture, I looked at it in horror. I was fat again. How had I gone from being a skin-wrapped skeleton to being fat again? I went home and weighed myself. 245 pounds. How was that even possible?

The answer was: I didn’t know how to eat. Sure, I’d gotten thin, but I had never learned how to actually eat, or what to eat, or when to eat. So when I was able to eat again, I went right back to eating more or less the same way I always had.

For a long time, I still didn’t really know. I would just cut a meal out of my day, either lunch or dinner (mostly dinner), in order to keep the weight down. When I did eat, I was ravenous. I ate too much and too much of it was crap, but I was able to hold at least some kind of grip on my weight. I was helped a bit by the fact that in 2003, after reading Fast Food Nation, I gave up fast food in all but emergency, “I’m on a road trip and at a highway rest stop” type cases (and even then I won’t patronize McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, or similar big chains — I’d rather go hungry than support those assholes).

For the next several years I typically fluctuated between 210 and 200, depending on how actively I was paying attention. I got down to 192 for my wedding. By our honeymoon, four months later, I was back up in the 200’s. You can see my belly and budding man-boobs in the honeymoon pics. It sucks. I want to look at those pictures and only think about the amazing two weeks I spent in Hawaii with my beautiful wife. And I mostly do … but I move quickly past the pics I’m in.

So that’s how it’s been, up until last year.

On March 26 of 2012, one year ago today, I stepped on the scale and weighed 207 lbs. I have a big frame and am somewhere between 5’11 and 6’, so I wasn’t “fat” exactly, but I wasn’t looking too great either. I couldn’t remember the last time I had done an activity more exerting than walking up a flight of stairs, and my daily food intake consisted mainly of coffee, diet coke, carbs, fat, and a healthy dinner prepared by my loving wife … which I then supplemented with a lot of Reese’s peanut butter cups. This is not a recipe for long-term dietary success. I decided it was time to try again.

You know how people say that you’ll never have success with diets and the only real way to achieve lasting fitness and weight loss is to change your life? They’re right.

Diets suck. You deprive yourself of things you love, and you make yourself miserable, and then you break the diet. That’s the way of it. I have done this a thousand times. I have started a diet at 7:00 on a Monday, and broken it at 9:30 when someone shows up at the office with a box of donuts.

You have to be ready to embrace a real life change. You have to be ready for it to take a long time, for it to be a gradual process of growth rather than a miracle quick-cure. You have to accept that you’re probably going to make mistakes, have bad days, and miss workouts. You have to keep looking forward.

Here’s how I changed my life:

I started with push-ups.

This is amusing, because I FUCKING HATE PUSH-UPS. I still do them three times a week, and I hate them every single time. I hate every. individual. push-up.

But they happen to be one of the absolute best exercises you can do. They work almost every part of your body. When I started, I did the following sequences, with two-minute breaks in between. 2-3-2-2-3. That’s 12 good-form push-ups total. With TWO MINUTE breaks! I also did ten sit-ups. That’s all I could manage. That was my first day. My arms ached for days after.

I began to track my meals using The Daily Plate — at first I just used it to learn what I was taking in, and then I used it to begin adjusting, staying mostly under the calorie threshold needed to lose 1.5 lbs / wk. I found that as my body adjusted, I really wasn’t any more hungry than I had been. The weight slowly began to drop.

After a few weeks of doing push-ups and sit-ups every other day, I began walking. My first walk was on May 5th, 2012, and I walked 3.2 miles. A long, slow walk. It felt good. I started doing it daily. Then I started running little bits of the walk. Eventually I worked up to running more than 50% of the time — doing 3.9 miles five days a week, at an average pace of about 5.5 mph. Then I developed plantar fasciitis and had to switch to an elliptical. I do 400 calories on the elliptical, plus cooldown (usually about 440 total). That seems a reasonable amount. I’ve actually been off the elliptical for a few months now because we moved, but the amount of housework and snow shoveling I’ve been doing has sustained me in terms of cardio. I’m buying an elliptical now that we’ve finished our work on our basement and thus have a place to put it.

I didn’t want to diet. Dieting sucks, remember? I still wanted to drink beer and eat the occasional slice or two (or three) of pizza. So what I did instead was change my overall approach to food. I think about portion size, now, all the time. I eat what I want, and what I like, but I try not to gorge on it. If I want those three slices of pizza, I cut down a bit during the day. At mealtimes, I eat a bit, and then I wait, and if I’m still hungry I eat a bit more. This is healthy eating 101, and I’d heard it a million times, but I didn’t get it. Not until this time. Something clicked. I don’t need the Daily Plate anymore, and haven’t used it in months, because I get it now.

I don’t waste my time with fad diets. Calories in, calories out, combined with a reasonable balance, is the important part. If your carbs are super high, that’s a problem. If your protein is super high, that’s a problem. If your fiber is super high … eh, you’re probably avoiding colon cancer, but add some carbs and protein.

I stick with a fairly specific schedule during weekdays, with slight deviations on weekends (I have what could charitably be called a weakness for the cheddar biscuits at a local coffee shop - sometimes I want to leap the counter and just start shoveling them into my mouth). I could easily construct several dozen meals that fit the same calorie counts, using commonly-available calorie information on the web, but I’m lazy so I mainly stick with the same stuff.

Here’s what I normally do:

9:30 AM - one relatively low-cal breakfast bar (I like Kashi’s chewy granola bars) and a big cup of coffee.

12:00 PM - 1 cup of low fat yogurt mixed with about a TBSP each of dried cranberries and dried cherries, 3/4 a cup of “honey flakes and oat clusters” cereal, and 1/4 cup of granola to punch up the flavor.

3:00 PM - One 19-piece serving of cheddar soy crisps, one apple, 1.25 oz of cheddar cheese (yes, I weigh it, every time), a handful of roasted almonds, and sometimes a few baby carrots depending on how hungry I feel.

8:00 PM-ish - Dinner. Sometimes I cook. Often my wife cooks. Often we go out. I don’t really worry about WHAT I’m eating, here, just how much … though I do try to get plenty of veggies in. I always eat the veggies FIRST, and then eat anything else. That way if I get full, I got all the veggies in. I try to eat a reasonable portion (this is harder at restaurants, but I’ve become pretty good about it).

10:30 PM - Most nights I have a cocktail, glass of wine, or a beer. Or two. It’s all good. I never, ever have to worry about these calories.

Yes, my meals during the day don’t vary much, but again: that’s mainly because I’m lazy. I don’t actually mind … I like that stuff, and I know I’ll get to have something fun for dinner. In the past year, I’ve changed various parts of the diet when I got tired of something. For a while it was popcorn and not soy crisps. I often change up my breakfast bars. In the summer, I switch my apple for a big nectarine. Etc. The important thing is to find stuff you like. I have literally never gone “oh, god, not yogurt again” because if I felt that way, I would switch.

Generally speaking, I do not snack (then again I’m usually full and don’t want snacks), and I only occasionally eat desserts. Once in a while I still allow myself a Reese’s peanut butter cup. Hey, I’m only human! If I get hungry in the evening, I’ll have some more cheddar and/or almonds.

I used to drink four diet cokes a day. Now I drink zero, except for very rare occasions — this isn’t a necessary step but it’s probably healthy. I don’t miss them and don’t remember why I used to drink so many. Once in a while I have a small bottle of tonic (I love Fever Tree’s Naturally Light tonic water). I don’t drink juice. I don’t drink milk since I’m lactose intolerant, though I use a little almond or soy milk in my coffee, along with some aspartame. Sometimes after working out, I drink half a bottle of zero-calorie Vitamin Water.

Mostly I drink water. Lots of it, every day. I pee a lot. Supposedly that’s good for you anyway.

If we throw a party and have a big cheese plate and lots of bread and wine, or if we go out to a fancy restaurant … I splurge. I eat what I want. Drink what I want. And the next morning, I get up, and I do my push-ups, and I’m fine. The body is built to be able to handle splurges. The problem is that if you’re not ready to change your life, then the splurges become routine.

Yesterday I did 110 good-form push-ups in the following sequence, with 90 second breaks: 30-30-25-25. My goal is to be able to do two sets of 50, with just a single 90 second break, someday soon. I don’t think I’m far off.

I also did 85 sit-ups (30-30-25, 90 second breaks). Today I will do two rounds of various lifting exercises, squats, and stretches with my 16 lb dumbbells. I’m almost ready to move up to 20 lbs. I work out six days a week. On Sundays, I relax and let my body rest up. On vacations, or when I’m sick with a cold or whatever, I do the same (sometimes if the vacation is really long, I’ll throw in a couple rounds of push-ups).

I weigh myself every morning and record the results on a whiteboard in the bathroom, and in a spreadsheet. I’m at 176 lbs, and have been within two pounds of that, in one direction or the other, since August 2012. That’s almost eight months. This isn’t a temporary drop anymore — this is a lifestyle change. It doesn’t require vigilance and sacrifice and being miserable. I actually love it. I’m not tired of eating like this, or exercising like this. I enjoy that stuff. Except the push-ups.

I am 35 years old now. I look like this:

For the first time in my life, at least since the era when my parents controlled my food intake, I feel like I know how to eat. I can deviate from my schedule when necessary and still have a pretty good idea of the kind of calories I’m putting into my body. I can go on two week vacations to France, enjoy the hell out of the food there, and come back without having gained any pounds.

I can stay at a comfortable weight, I can look good in the mirror, and I can do it without being miserable. I still get to make delicious cocktails and drink the beer I brew. I still get to share the occasional fancy dessert with my wife. All it took were a few changes to my life that, in retrospect, seem really minor.

There are two morals to this story, really. The first is that if you’re overweight, keep trying. Eventually it’ll click. It really will. You’ll understand a bit more every single time you try, and at some point you’ll find yourself making long-term changes to your lifestyle instead of short-term changes based solely on dropping pounds. This is the most important thing.

The other moral is simple.

It’s terribly unfortunate.

But I must offer it nonetheless. Here it is:

Do your push-ups.

maxistentialist: This is what gamers look like if you put...

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 18:52:49 -0400

maxistentialist:

This is what gamers look like if you put female characters into your games.

I saw a ZILLION women of all ages at PAX (and at least 20 of them dressed as Chell). This “girls only play casual games” bullshit is such a crock.

femfreq: Damsel in Distress: Part 1 - Tropes vs Women in Video...

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 17:16:32 -0400

femfreq:

Damsel in Distress: Part 1 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games

This video explores how the Damsel in Distress became one of the most widely used gendered clichés in the history of gaming and why the trope has been core to the popularization and development of the medium itself. As a trope the Damsel in Distress is a plot device in which a female character is placed in a perilous situation from which she cannot escape on her own and must then be rescued by a male character, usually providing a core incentive or motivation for the protagonist’s quest.

ABOUT THE VIDEO SERIES
The Tropes vs Women in Video Games project aims to examine the plot devices and patterns most often associated with female characters in gaming from a systemic, big picture perspective. This series will include critical analysis of many beloved games and characters, but remember that it is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of it’s more problematic or pernicious aspects.

For more examples of the Damsel in Distress see our Tumblr for this series: http://tropesversuswomen.tumblr.com

Visit http://www.feministfrequency.com for more information, videos and a full transcript.

adammuto: No. 39 This, right here, exactly describes how my...

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 12:44:53 -0500

adammuto:

No. 39

This, right here, exactly describes how my cat, Carbomb, operates.

Sorry to see it come to an end! If you haven’t followed...

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 00:18:44 -0500

Sorry to see it come to an end! If you haven’t followed this tumblr, you should go back to the very beginning and watch the beast evolve. I’ve been watching since Beast #1, and the transformations have been really fun!

exquisitebeast:

The Hundredth Beast.

Beast number one hundred! The beast’s plating has separated into a thick shell and the front branches of its legs have separated further into weight-baring limbs. The horns on the top of its skull have become hinged, a pinscher-like helmet that can move independently from the rest of its head.

Folks, that is the end! We would like to thank you all so much for your support and enjoyment of this project. There is a chance that in the future Evan and I will continue the Exquisite Beast past its 100th iteration, but for now we have other projects on our respective plates (including Benign Kingdom and our respective webcomics). Feel free to follow me on tumblr at aidosaur and Evan at evndahm. Thank you again and please watch here for news in the near future!

It's still available, hopefully they take it down soon.

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 21:39:42 -0500

It's still available, hopefully they take it down soon.:

Here’s Forever 21 ripping off an artist with no attribution, no credit, and certainly no payment. Good job, guys.

Why don’t companies understand that you can’t DO this anymore? The internet will find you out. Stop it.

moosekleenex:

Man, not attributing images is bad … changing the text...

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:07:12 -0500

Man, not attributing images is bad … changing the text like this and essentially claiming it as your own is just awful.

krisstraub:

Thanks for sharing this!

My Thoughts on #1ReasonWhy

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 13:19:43 -0500

In March of 1999, at the age of twenty-one, I moved from Syracuse, New York to Costa Mesa, California to take a job with GameSpy Industries. I wore a ton of hats over my five years there, but I was first assigned the role of managing PlanetQuake, which was at the time the company’s flagship website and the one which had put them on the gaming map.

During this period, I began running a “shoutcast” with some of my fellow employees — a predecessor to podcasts which was interesting because it was done live, with a chat room full of people “talking” to us. We called it the Friday Frag, and the idea was that every Friday we’d talk about games for an hour or so and then all hop on a server with the listeners and blow each other up for a while.

During one such broadcast, we had a visitor to the chat channel who called herself “Hellchick” and I ended up inviting her to call into the office so I could put her on the show to “prove she was a woman.”

Yes, this actually happened.

I won’t defend myself for succumbing to what was, even in 1999, already becoming an amazingly stupid stereotype: that women didn’t use the internet and it was exclusively the domain of sweaty dudes in their mom’s basement (we were a startup of only fifteen people and we already had four women in the office, for Christ’s sake). It was a dumb moment of casual … sexism? Misogyny? I’m not sure what it was, exactly.

To Hellchick’s credit, she not only put up with it, but she actually called in. In retrospect, I’m both amazed and very happy that she did. Hellchick — who I’ve called Caryn for the last thirteen years — became a very good friend. We hired her. She eventually ran PanetQuake and 3DActionPlanet. After a while, she moved on to Activision to work as a liaison with companies like id Software and Raven, with whom she had become close due to her work at GameSpy.

Then Caryn moved on to Raven itself. Her journey had taken her from astrophysicist who gamed, to game journalist, to gaming company liaison, to game developer. She is currently a User Experience Designer with Z2Live in Washington. She loves her job, loves her industry, and loves video games in general.

My stupid, unthinking sexism was not the first she’d ever had to put up with (nor was that “innocent” kind the most common), and it certainly wasn’t the last. As a woman who games, Caryn has been the target of both nebulous and highly-targeted sexism for her entire life.

Moving from “woman gamer” to “woman in gaming” changed things, though. Now it was not only sexist attacks from other players, but day-to-day institutional sexism as well. Women are still a significant minority in game development, and as a result they are badly underrepresented and misrepresented in the final product. The classic stereotype of “the male warrior is covered in armor while the female warrior goes to battle in a chain-link bikini” exists for a reason. Many women developers have complaints that have nothing to do with how they are treated by gamers, and everything to do with the rampant and often unconscious sexism at work in the very offices they go to every day.

When the #1ReasonWhy phenomenon — women in game development tweeting one reason why there aren’t more women in game development — started up a few days ago, Caryn took to twitter with her own reasons. She has a lot of them.

The backlash that followed was predictable and disappointing. The same old tired bullshit. “Games with women in them don’t sell” (false), “Women don’t play games” (amazingly false), “Men are just as objectified as women in gaming” (specious), “I’m not like that so whatever” (not good enough), “The Female Shepard in Mass Effect is awesome so everything’s fine” (ridiculous — and yes, that’s a real argument that many people make). There were many more. They’re boring and stupid and not what I want to talk about here, because every single argument of that type has been utterly destroyed by fifty years of feminist thinking by people — most of them women — who are much smarter than I am.

What was not predictable or disappointing was the absolute tidal wave of supportive tweets, blog entries, and press coverage that came along. Gamers, game developers, and journalists — female and male — embraced the hashtag. They wrote articles about it, had discussions about it, posted to forums about it. They engaged in lengthy debates on Twitter and Facebook. New friends were made. Some eyes were opened. Most importantly: the discussion was shoved into the spotlight. That’s a good thing, no matter how much backlash it brought. Like the abolition of slavery, the civil rights movement, marriage equality … nothing gets done if no one will talk about it. Progress is only made by shining a big, bright light on the ugly warts that no one wants to look at.

Men who go to bat for women in these instances are often accused of “white knighting” — basically trying to come in as the savior for the weak little woman who can’t defend herself (the suspicion often being: in the hopes of getting sex, or other favors). There are probably men for whom this is the case, but there are a lot of us who understand that people like Caryn and the many other female game developers out there don’t NEED any help. They’re already out there doing what needs to be done to change the game. They’re tolerating the vile comments on message boards, the “accidental” gropes at conventions, the managers who ignore their ideas but then embrace the same ideas when parroted by a male developer. They’re dealing with all that shit because they love games that much, and the industry is changing because of that.

In time, gaming will be a gender-neutral industry, and we’ll look back on the early days the way we look at the era when women weren’t allowed to vote. “Wait … seriously?”

In the interim, women in gaming still have to deal with everything — EVERYTHING — being couched in their gender. One of Caryn’s most frequent complaints is that she’s never asked about her work. She’s asked about being a woman. As I tweeted: Q for male dev: “how’d you come up with that monster design?” Q for female dev: “what’s it like working in games and also having boobs?”

This is where the work really needs to be done. You can’t change the minds of rampant sexists, and it’s not worth the time and effort. If you change the minds (or just open the minds) of everyone else, the lost causes can be marginalized klu klux klan-style. You do this by addressing the real problem, the very same problem that I suffered from back in 1999: the innocent, unthinking sexism that comes with just accepting the status quo and not considering or, more importantly, talking about this stuff.

That’s what has to change, and that’s why this movement is so important and awesome: it’s got people talking, and talking is what counts. We need to shine that light on those ugly warts so they can be excised. We also need to stop asking women in games about the “women” part and start asking them about the “in games” part. Yes, we need to acknowledge the very real problems that exist right now, but it needs to be done with an end-goal of it just not mattering anymore because it’s no longer relevant.

In 1999, I asked a woman to call into my internet radio show to prove she had boobs. In 2012, I read her blog to learn about UX design and frankly don’t give a shit whether she has boobs or not. It doesn’t matter to me anymore, and I don’t remember why it ever did. More and more gamers, game journalists, and game developers feel like that. That’s progress. Let’s keep it up.

—-

Caryn’s Twitter: http://twitter.com/hellchick

Caryn’s Blog: http://carynvainio.com/

Recent Sips - Ron Abuelo Rum

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 22:02:00 -0500

I recently had the chance to sample the seven and twelve-year offerings from Ron Abuelo Rum, a Panamanian rum whose origins date back to the opening of a sugar mill in 1908. They specialize in dark, Añejo (aged) rums, and distribute them in short, stout bottles with classical-styled labels. I’ve been testing both varieties for a few weeks. Full disclosure: I received these products free of charge. That said, they are really very good.

Here are my tasting notes:

Ron Abuelo 7 Year

Though it’s the younger and theoretically “inferior” rum in this comparison, Ron Abuelo 7 is no joke. Aged for seven years in oak barrels, it pours a nice amber color. The nose is sweet up front, fruity and spicy. There’s a bit of alcohol scent, but it’s not overwhelming. On the tongue it’s spicy-sweet at first, spreading out to fruity notes and delivering a long and very warm finish.

This is a nice sipping rum — the folks at Ron Abuelo describe it as a “must for cigar aficionados” — and it’s also very at home in rum cocktails. Try making a daiquiri with a couple ounces of Ron Abuelo 7 for a much deeper, more intense cocktail than you get with white rum. At a $22.99 MSRP (which means you’ll probably find it for a few bucks less), it’s ridiculously affordable.

Ron Abuelo 12 Year

If the 7 year is good, the 12 Year is remarkable. The color is deeper and darker, and the nose hits you hard with buttery molasses and caramel notes. There’s a less pronounced alcohol burn in the taste, both up front and in the finish. You get a whole lot of chocolate and caramel up front, along with a hint of smoky burnt sugar. Vanilla and oak arrive in the transition to the finish, leaving a sweet, mild warmth on the tongue.

Highly affordable at an MSRP of $32.99, Ron Abuelo 12 Year is a straight sipping rum — using it in most cocktails would be wasting its qualities. You don’t want to cover it up with lime juice or cola. That said, I do have one serving suggestion that I’ll outline below: the rum old-fashioned.

2.5 oz Ron Abuelo 12 Year Rum
.5 oz simple syrup
One large orange peel
Generous dash Angostura Bitters
Generous dash Fee Brothers 1864 Old Fashioned Bitters

Drop the orange peel into a rocks glass and muddle gently to express its natural oils. Fill the glass halfway with cracked or crushed ice and add the liquid ingredients. Stir vigorously to combine.

This cocktail, like the bourbon old fashioned it’s modeled after, lets the rum’s strengths stand out rather than masking them. Don’t just take my word for it … I whipped one of these up the other day and had my wife try it. It got the coveted “Wow that is REALLY good!” from her, and I think you’ll feel the same!

The Children of the Sun is available!

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 16:03:44 -0400

The Children of the Sun is available!:

The third book in my II AM Trilogy, The Children of the Sun, is now available as an ebook or a print edition (including signed copies for a limited time). You can get all the details over at the II AM Trilogy website!

samspratt: Sam Spratt’s Halloween Portrait Contest! In brief:...

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 15:21:36 -0400

samspratt:

Sam Spratt’s Halloween Portrait Contest!

In brief: Likes and Reblogs of this image are each entries in the contest to win a portrait of you drawn by me.

In slightly less brief: To those new to this, that means that should you be the random winner, I would draw a portrait of your beautiful face (or someone’s face you care about)… as a horrifically ugly, flesh-eating, undead walker-face. It’s like winning the lottery! (except not at all like that…) That said, it is the best emotional preparation possible should you fall victim to the zombie apocalypse and run (walk slowly) across a mirror in the wreckage of your once beautiful town. (I will also draw you as anything halloween/horror themed, but the undead are a favorite).

Doing each of the following counts as an entry:

Facebook: Comment and/or Share this image >HERE<

Tumblr: Like and/or Reblog this image

Twitter: Following @samspratt and tweeting “Entering to win a portrait of myself drawn as the undead by @samspratt ! http://on.fb.me/RPNehj ”

Contest closes on Sunday Oct. 28th at midnight EST

PS Yes, that’s a drawing of The Walking Dead’s Rick Grimes as a Walker

Recent Sips - Spirit Micro-Reviews

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 13:01:47 -0400

I’ve recently had the opportunity to try a few new spirits and liqueurs, and I’m a bit behind in posting about them, so let’s do a wrap-up that features them all!

Sailor Jerry spiced rum

The folks behind Sailor Jerry started out as an indie company in Philadelphia, and though they’ve since sold to William Grant & Sons (who also own Hendrik’s, Stolichnaya, Tulamore Dew, Glenfiddich, and several other brands). That means that what was once a local, difficult-to-find product is now readily available in most liquor stores for the reasonable price of around $16/bottle.

I like Sailor Jerry a lot. It’s spiced but still allows the rum character to show through. Captain Mogan — the big dog in the Spiced Rum yard — can be a little cloying when taken neat or on the rocks, but much like The Kraken, Sailor Jerry doesn’t need to be mixed to be enjoyed. That said, it also plays very well in cocktails, particularly tropical and tiki drinks, and it makes a delicious Cuba Libre.

PAMA liqueur

We’re well past the pomegranate super-fruit blowout that happened in the early 2000s. Pomegranates and pomegranate juice are widely available and people are even starting to use real pomegranate grenadine in cocktails again (yay!). Now we’ve got Pomegranate booze, and if you like pomegranates — I do — it ain’t bad.

PAMA Liqueur is sour. Sweet and sour and incredibly strong … not alcohol-wise (it’s only 17% ABV, which means there are some wines and even a few beers with a higher alcohol content) but just in terms of flavor. I prefer it as a mixer rather than trying to drink it straight, and to that end, some of the cocktails they’ve created for it that can be found on their website are pretty tasty. The Bird in the Hand, crafted by master mixologist Eben Freeman, which I mention in my Tiki Drinks article here, is also pretty excellent.

Mariposa agave nectar liqueur

This is the strangest liquor I’ve yet received from a PR agency. A new product, it’s an “agave liqueur” made from agave cactus nectar and blended with tequila and vodka, with some botanicals added for depth of flavor. It’s very sweet up front and doesn’t pack quite as much of a punch as the strongest liqueurs — it’s only 60 proof, rather than 80.

Make no mistake, though, the dominant note in this liqueur is the vegetal cactus taste of tequila. If you’re not a fan of tequila, you absolutely won’t like Mariposa. If you do like tequila, then it might work for you. Mariposa’s flavor combinations are really unique, and I’m not sure I’m in love with it. I think it might work well as a vegetal/floral note in a cocktail or two, but it gets pretty overwhelming when you drink it straight. To be fair, even the marketing materials seem to regard it more as a mixer than as a standalone entity.

My advice on this one would be: try it out at a bar or a friend’s place first, before investing in an entire bottle. It’s not a bad liqueur, but it’s definitely not going to be right for everyone’s palate.

Dalmore 12 Year scotch whisky

The Dalmore is a single malt from the Scottish highlands. They age their whisky in American white oak bourbon barrels and Spanish sherry barrels, and they don’t use any burnt peat, so the scotch lacks the smokiness that many brands offer. There’s a lot of sweet notes to the nose - I found maple syrup, raisin, spice and a hint of milk chocolate - and the taste is pretty citrusy. There’s a strong alcohol note to be found, and when taken neat it’s very sweet up front before the alcohol burn sets in. I found that a splash of filtered water helped smooth things out.

Because it doesn’t beat you over the head with smokiness, this scotch is easier to work with in cocktails than some others. You could definitely use it for a Rob Roy or a Blood and Sand, and I had success with one of the recipes I found in PDT’s cocktail book, a Benedictine-infused Manhattan variant called the Bobby Burns.

A Late Post on Mass Effect 3

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 09:39:12 -0400

I finally got around to playing and finishing Mass Effect 3. Yes, it came out six months ago. Hey, I’m busy — I have a day job, a novel coming out in November, cocktail articles to write, and a wife who I like to see on occasion! I’m just glad I got to it sometime in 2012.

I played through the game with the “From Ashes” and “Leviathan” DLCs installed, but without the Extended Cut endings. This was actually a mistake — I had meant to install the Extended Cut as well and just forgot — but I’m now glad I did it that way, since I’ve seen the ending as Bioware originally released it. I’ve since installed the Extended Cut and checked it out as well, so I’m all caught up.

Yes, the original ending is a massive letdown, but not for the reasons I thought most people were complaining about. Having since read more of the complaints that are out there (didn’t want to spoil it for myself previously), I’ve seen that there are actually a lot of reasoned, well-articulated arguments, and many of them have nothing to do with what actually happens to Shepard. That’s interesting, because I agree that what happens to Shepard isn’t the problem.

So, let me add my thoughts to the pile. Warning: there be plenty of spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk.

Still with me? Good. So here’s the thing: it’s OK to kill your main character.

I was pretty sure from very early on, when the first info about ME3 came out, that there weren’t going to be any “little blue babies” for Shepard and Liara (who my FemShep has been faithful to all the way through). They were setting Shepard up as a Christ figure, and someone that impossibly good — even if you play Renegade, Shepard’s overall arc is still of someone who will sacrifice at every turn to save the galaxy — almost has to become a mythological figure at the end. That doesn’t happen to living people.

So, I expected Shepard to die. When the uproar began over the game’s endings, that only strengthened my belief, and I thought people were being petty. I actually thought killing off Shepard was both ballsy and a solid, logical conclusion to the arc. I thought people were just upset because too many video games focus too heavily on happily-ever-afters (with maybe an occasional bit of drama to set up a sequel).

But it’s not Shepard’s death that (most) people are complaining about. Instead, there are really two main flaws with the ending:

1. You don’t get nearly enough explanation of what happened — there’s a few still shots of Joker, Anderson, and Liara. There’s an incredibly weird cut scene with Joker where it’s not explained at all why he apparently fled the final battle. There’s a very brief “here’s some hope for the galaxy” cut scene, and then the credits, after which comes the mythologizing of “The Shepard” (which I liked). There’s no explanation of what the hell happened to the vast bulk of the people you have spent three games making friends with, and it’s just … not enough.

To their credit, Bioware realized this, acknowledged it, and more or less fixed it with the DLC. One does wonder how the hell the game got released with the original ending without anyone on the team going “hey, this doesn’t explain a single goddamn thing,” but it did. At least they fixed it. But fixing it only adds clarity, it doesn’t actually change what happens.

That leads us to the much bigger problem:

2. Three games worth of choices are discarded in the final moment for a “choose your own ending” sequence where you literally just walk one of three 50-foot paths in order to decide the fate of the galaxy. No matter what you’ve done, no matter who’s survived and who hasn’t, no matter if you’ve played full Paragon, full Renegade, or a mix of the two … you’re still getting those same three paths, and only those three paths. All of those choices you made leading up to this moment amount to absolutely nothing, and in the non-DLC endings, none of the choices are even shown to have had any affect on the ending at all.

So that’s bad, but the choices themselves are worse. All three Mass Effect games, particularly the third, have been about “Destroy the Reapers at any cost,” all the way up until the end, at which point it becomes a choice of destroy, control, or merge. It is made apparent even without the additional dialog provided by the DLC that the game’s authors think merging is the best option (and the DLC only reinforces this).

I agree with this in real life — the merger of man and machine is the only way forward for our species — and it STILL pissed me off in the game. Forcing synthesis upon the galaxy without even asking anybody about it, when it’s been made clear a billion times over that what the galaxy wants is to move forward on its own into an uncertain but Reaper-free future, is unreasonable. It’s unfair. It’s un-Shepard-like (unless perhaps you’ve been playing full-Renegade, and I’m doubting that’s the default approach for most players).

Yet destroying the Reapers was out; I couldn’t bring myself to take an option that was going to wipe out the Geth, EDI, and every other sentient synthetic that I had spent the past three games fighting to legitimize. The game’s flat statement that “all synthetics will eventually destroy their creators” would be nonsense even if I hadn’t JUST FINISHED proving it was nonsense by uniting the Quarians and the Geth. So wiping them out just because the Catalyst says they’re bad, when I just proved they aren’t, isn’t very compelling.

And control? What am I, the Illusive Man? That just leads to Shepard becoming a god-consciousness, which is the most inevitably corruptible thing ever. You don’t want a single entity in control of anything bigger than the local Burger King. At the absolute best, you get a benevolent dictator. At the worst, you just get a tyrant.

In what feels like a half-assed attempt to be deep, Bioware has essentially become one of those guys who runs a near-perfect marathon only to have their body give out in sight of the finish line. For 25.5 miles, the game has told us to destroy the Reapers. It’s been pounded into us over and over. Going “hey wait maybe not” in the last half mile is a cop-out. It’s an attempt to shoehorn depth and “choice” into what could have, and should have, been a straight-forward ending to the story. Kill Shepard if you must, but those Reapers better be destroyed. You don’t have to give me choice here. You’ve given me choices all along, and those choices should have shaped the ending, but the ending you have been building to is the Reapers’ destruction in some form. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

The whole point was that, after millions of years of the galaxy playing the same song on repeat, someone was finally going to press the “next track” button. What was that track going to be? Nobody knows, but that’s the point: it’s time to move forward and find out what’s next.

One last thing:

It must also be noted that all three of these paths are so identical to the choices at the end of Deus Ex that it’s jaw-dropping. It’s shameless. The thing is, though, that in DX the choices not only made sense but were all actually appealing in their own way. The entire game had been building up to that moment, the obvious choice between rejection of the machine, control of the machine, or fusion with the machine, and it had made good cases for all three. The game’s lengthy rhetoric had been focused explicitly on these choices — it covered the nature of humanity, of God, and of the potential advent of the singularity (Jesus, DX was such a great game). It made you really unsure of whether you wanted to push the world forward, keep it as-is, or blow it back to the stone age. Mass Effect makes no such effort to infuse these choices with so much depth, and the ending suffers for it.

So …

What we have is a brilliant series marred pretty heavily by a flawed ending. That’s really unfortunate, but it doesn’t change that I loved playing all three games and will buy another if they make one. There are so many things they did right. It’s a shame the thing they screwed up came at the end, but I can live with it. I can live with Shepard being discorporated into a zillion tiny pieces in order to force man and machine into a glorious new age of “synthetic DNA” … I just wish I didn’t have to.

But I do. And I will, because I loved so much about these games. So let me finish this post on a high note by calling out what was, for me, the most moving and significant part of the entire series. It wasn’t Anderson’s death or Shepard’s running dive into the Catalyst as she gave up everything she had to save the galaxy. It wasn’t her rousing speech to her friends or seeing her overcome the Illusive Man’s influence. It wasn’t even the final moment with Liara, on Earth, just before the shit really hit the fan, though that was very sweet and made me sorry again that the little blue babies were never going to happen.

Let me tell you about my Shepard:

She’s sitting by the terminal in the Citadel next to Anderson, a good friend and a father-figure who has just given his life for mankind and for the galaxy. She’s looking at the blood coming from the wound in her side, coating her battered hands, and knows that she’s going to die as well. This is it, and she knew that this was going to be it long before it came to this point, and it seems she’s accepted this. She slumps sideways, ready to let herself go. The Catalyst and the Crucible are joined. It’s over. They’ve won. She can rest.

And then Hackett’s voice is in her ear, urgently calling her name, and with obvious, painful effort, Shepard shoves herself upright. There’s no moment of self pity, no expression of the agony she’s experiencing, no wondering why me? Something is wrong, and the galaxy is still at risk.

Shepard reaches up, touches her earpiece, and speaks:

“What do you need me to do?”

I commissioned Bengal — a French artist and a long-time...

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 14:15:38 -0400

I commissioned Bengal — a French artist and a long-time favorite of mine — to do a drawing of Neil Gaiman’s Death character. It turned out amazing!

Here’s some amazing Two fan-art from Adrian Dadich, the...

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:40:00 -0400

Here’s some amazing Two fan-art from Adrian Dadich, the cover illustrator from The Blood That Bonds. Want to learn more about Two? The first book is free! Check out http://iiamtrilogy.com for more info.

The worst thing about this is my utter lack of surprise....

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 06:57:12 -0400

The worst thing about this is my utter lack of surprise. I’ve had good luck with Geico but I don’t think for a minute that they’d have my back if the stakes got higher than a few grand. This is particularly egregious, however, and I want to join the public outcry in the hopes of shaming Progressive into doing the right thing and paying what they very clearly owe.

mattfisher:

My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court

I’ve been sending out some impertinent tweets about Progressive Insurance lately, but I haven’t explained how they pissed me off. So I will do that here as succinctly as possible. There’s a general understanding that says, “insurance companies— oh they’re awful,” but since Progressive turned their shit hose on my late sister and my parents, I’ve learned some things that really surprised me.

I’ll try to cleave to the facts. On June 19, 2010, my sister was driving in Baltimore when her car was struck by another car and she was killed. The other driver had run a red light and hit my sister as she crossed the intersection on the green light.

Read More

I think I need two more years of French training before I can...

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 09:16:08 -0400

I think I need two more years of French training before I can live here. At which point, all I need is like two million euros for a 3 BR flat. No problem, right?

I actually found this really moving. -cwb dresdencodak: Carl...

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 06:03:53 -0400

I actually found this really moving.

-cwb

dresdencodak:

Carl Sagan’s message to future explorers of Mars.

Science and science fiction have done a kind of dance over the last century, particularly with respect to Mars. The scientists make a finding. It inspires science fiction writers to write about it, and a host of young people read the science fiction and are excited, and inspired to become scientists to find out more about Mars, which they do, which then feeds again into another generation of science fiction and science; and that sequence has played major role in our present ability to get to Mars. It certainly was an important factor in the life of Robert Goddard, the American rocketry pioneer who, I think more than anyone else, paved the way for our actual ability to go to Mars. And it certainly played a role in my scientific development.

I don’t know why you’re on Mars. Maybe you’re there because we’ve recognized we have to carefully move small asteroids around to avert the possibility of one impacting the Earth with catastrophic consequences, and, while we’re up in near-Earth space, it’s only a hop, skip and a jump to Mars. Or, maybe we’re on Mars because we recognize that if there are human communities on many worlds, the chances of us being rendered extinct by some catastrophe on one world is much less. Or maybe we’re on Mars because of the magnificent science that can be done there - the gates of the wonder world are opening in our time. Maybe we’re on Mars because we have to be, because there’s a deep nomadic impulse built into us by the evolutionary process, we come after all, from hunter gatherers, and for 99.9% of our tenure on Earth we’ve been wanderers. And, the next place to wander to, is Mars. But whatever the reason you’re on Mars is, I’m glad you’re there. And I wish I was with you.